


Heart's Desire

by PrettyArbitrary



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fairy Tale, F/F, F/M, Fade to Black, Lord of the Hunt, M/M, Magic, Sirens, Witches, enchanted forest
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-09
Updated: 2015-06-09
Packaged: 2018-04-03 13:47:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,434
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4103191
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PrettyArbitrary/pseuds/PrettyArbitrary
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In their youth, living near the forest, John and Harry had plenty of hopes and dreams and reckless ideas.  So when John grew up, he went off to be a soldier.  </p><p>Later on, he came back wounded and broken and empty, and Harry was there to meet him, her eyes gone as lightless and grey as his.  She had never left at all.</p><p>But the forest can give many gifts.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Heart's Desire

**Author's Note:**

> Written for [Nevi.](http://fuckyeahshezza.tumblr.com/) It wouldn't exist if not for her.
> 
> I almost decided to name it "A Johnlock Fairytale."

Once upon a time, two children named John and Harriet lived on a farm near the edge of a forest.

Everyone in the community was respectful and a little frightened of the forest.  It gave them bounties of wood and food and all kinds of products that enabled them to thrive.  But they knew to offer gifts in return for what they took, so that the forest god wouldn’t get angry and attack them with wolves or storms or fire.

Young and bored in their youth, John and Harry spent most of their time at the edge of the forest.  They were wild little children and they liked to wander past its borders without ceremony or any kind of offering for safe passage, the way the woodsmen and hunters had taught everyone.  They didn’t bother to hush their voices when they went, either, as they’d spin stories for each other of the adventures they would have one day once they got big went out into the world.  They had plenty of hopes and dreams and reckless ideas, and anyone could have told them--and often did--that the world isn’t so kind, but people with hearts like theirs can’t listen to that kind of talk.

So when John grew up, he went off to be a soldier.  Later on, he came back wounded and broken and empty, and Harry was there to meet him, her eyes gone as lightless and grey as his.  She had never left at all.

Now they just work, like their parents did. Work and wish vaguely, in the place where they used to have dreams when they were young and used to play on the edges of the forest.

But the forest can give many gifts.

One day when Harry goes into the forest, foraging for tasty things—berries, nuts, wild herbs—she doesn't come back.

So of course John and some other people from their town go to look for her.

John is naturally the one who finds a sign of her. A torn bit of her cloth from her skirt, and scuffs on the forest floor that show him which way she went, and that she was running from something.  

But he can’t tell what kind of beast made the tracks, and when he tries to follow the trail, it doesn't go anywhere in the forest he recognizes.

As he follows it, the forest starts to get dark and closed in. Weird noises rustle and swish through the understory around him, and the canopy overhead. Is that an animal…? It must be, but it sounds off. Strange flitting shapes back in the distance, between the trees, and a feeling like he's being watched.

Sometimes the woods are dangerous, everybody knows, especially at certain times of the year.  And some places in them are places people know not to go.  But here is Harry's trail, and scrapes and claw marks after it.

The forest path is one of those that twists and turns so that at any given moment you can't see where it's taking you. John splashes through a stream, and plunges through a bright meadow, and when he goes back into the dark beneath the trees on the other side, there standing before him like living light and shadow is the forest god.

“Fuck,” John says, because now he’s in trouble.

He’s so…big, like somehow he towers beyond his own body as he stands before John.  A spreading rack of antlers crowns his head, covered by a layer of velvet.  Early summer flowers are in his soft dark hair, and matching fur collars his shoulders and hips, tinted slightly green here and there at the ends by opportunistic moss.  He smells like all the green earth things, the fragrant loam and sweet water and flowers and all the pungent sorts of plants, and also the warm animal and musk scents of the fur he’s wrapped in.  His face is clear and cold and graceful as water-smoothed stone.

The forest god is nature wrapped in breath and heartbeat, lush and beautiful and cruel, and everybody knows his one law: that for every thing you take, you must give--one way or another.  

He watches John with eyes the color of sky and moon and clear glinting stream, and asks, “What are you chasing?”

John tells him, even though the forest god must know. And the forest god says, “I remember you, you know.”

“Oh,” says John, with a sinking feeling, because what else can he say?

“Oh yes,” says the forest god, and smiles a slow fox smile.  “You and your sister.  You used to dwell at my edges, and tell stories and steal across my borders.  The little wild golden children.  You were almost like two of mine.”

His voice rolls, dark and contemplative as the rich earth after a rain. The god looks him over from head to toe in the most unsettlingly thorough once-over John's ever gotten.  When he speaks again, it’s like a gong that rings in John’s bones and makes them ache and groan.  “You’re broken and hollow now, aren’t you?”  He shakes his head with a contemptuous curl of his lip.  “You can’t trust the human world.  It doesn't know how to take care of fine things.”  And then, as if it’s all the same to him and he hasn’t just popped John open and rifled through him, he asks, “Do you want to cross my borders?”

John can see the trail Harry left going further past, so yes, of course, he needs to.

And Sherlock asks, “What will you give me?”

They both know he should have made an offering before he got this far, but he didn't really have time because who knows what might be happening to Harry?

But he's also short on offerings.  So, “I could do you a favor?” John suggests.  Even though he knows how stupid _that_  is, because you don't just go cutting open-ended deals with the forest folk, but there it is. Harry needs him, and it’s all he can do.

So he says, “Look, I'll do you a favor. But I can't do it right now because I need to stop my sister from being eaten by something.” He's not really sure what, because the tracks following his sister's trail really are alarmingly ambiguous.

And he's rapidly developing a sense that he's in over his head somehow, because the forest god is looking at him with a strange piercing look that feels a bit like he's running his fingers meditatively over the insides of John's head, and smiling rather disturbingly.

But all he does is nod his regal head in acceptance.

Then he grins more—gosh, he's got rather sharp teeth—and asks, “Do you know what part of the forest you're in?”

He knows damn well John doesn't, so he tells John where he is without bothering to wait for a reply, and John goes pale because there are stories of a witch that lives around here somewhere.

If he'd known _that_  was where he was heading, he would've…well, he's not sure what, but at least he would've known how stupidly reckless he was being.

The forest god just stands there, taking in the expressions crossing John's face.  And he says, “In return for the favor you've offered, you may ask my help once, to bring your sister back home. Call my name and I'll come.”

John turns rather pink. Of course the people who live around the forest know the forest god’s name, but it would be terribly familiar to say it.  Being invited to call him is…well.

But still, Harry needs him—more than ever, apparently ( _a witch_ , and strange tracks, and oh Harry what have you got into?)—so he just says, “Thank you. I will. I need to go now.”

And he hears the forest god laugh behind him, sounding rather surprised and pleased, as John ducks past to get back on the trail.

As he goes, he thinks about what the forest god was like. It’d been like he’d stood under the dappled forest sun, with sunlight and green shadow shimmering across his alabaster skin, even though no light got through the trees.  His voice had come to live in John’s chest.  If Harry weren’t in trouble, John would’ve been tempted to fall into it and just stand here forever.

He'd been incredible, really. As powerful as trees and graceful as a deer and frighteningly stark as the depths of winter, and he’d seen into John with a cougar's stare. And the thought that John can call him (by name!) to see him again makes something fizz in the pit of John's stomach.

But the woods are growing deep and brambly, and the sounds and smells are changing, and somewhere on the other side of the leaf canopy that only allows a deep green twilight, John knows the sun is getting low.

That's when he finds the first cobblestones.

They're laid out among the leaves and ferns like a garden path, and as he catches sight of the next few, he sees that they're going back to a cottage with firelight glowing through the window.

John is staring, he suspects, straight at the witch's front door.

It's a nice front door.  Well kept.  The witch clearly takes pride in her property. Nice well-maintained garden under the front windows, even if half of them are probably poisonous. Knowing witches.

Not that John does know witches, or gardening really; that'd been more his mother's thing. And his sister's. _She’d_ know if those pretty flowers could kill you…and he is babbling to himself in his own head. Because that's the witch's cottage.

He doesn't really know how witches work, whether he's about to be turned into a frog or what. But something was chasing his sister, and his sister went this way, and this is a witch's house. So he circles around, trying to see if he can see any scary beasts or gnarled women, or maybe Harry turning into the tree in the back yard or something. None of which stands out to him.

So he loosens his gun in its holster—none of the search party had been mad enough to go into the woods unarmed—and decides the only thing left to do is knock on the front door.

The witch—one presumes—answers like she'd been standing right next to it, waiting for him.

And you know, the stories have been around for so long—John's grandfather had told witch stories when John was little, and those had happened to people in _his_  father's generation—John had really been expecting a gnarled old woman. But…she's really lovely.

She has blonde hair and large blue eyes so knowing that John has a hard time meeting them, and a smirk on her face either like a woman who has made pacts with the Devil or a woman who knows she's facing a man who just circled her entire property because he was too afraid of her to knock on the door.

Harry smiles like that too, sometimes, so John doesn't want to jump to conclusions.

Either way, the only woman who could smile like that besides Harry has to be the witch.

But before he can say anything, she says, “I don't have your pretty sister, I'm afraid.”

She steps aside and holds the door, and before John realizes he's even cleared the threshold, he's stepped inside. She shuts the door behind him—not particularly ominously, although quite suddenly he's debating whether he's more concerned about offending her or not being able to open that door.

It may be wise to note at this juncture the _kind_  of stories told about the witch.

It's been a long time since much of anyone was foolish enough to venture into this part of the forest. But in her time, when people lived closer, children sometimes liked to raid her garden (she is, after all, an exceptional gardener).

If they got into her fruit trees…suddenly she seemed to have more fruit trees, and there were fewer children, and then she would bring astoundingly tasty pies in to market for selling a week or two later.

John once heard a story about a man who stole one of her chickens. A few nights later, when he was out putting their animals to bed, his wife heard a mighty commotion in the chicken coop with tremendous clucking.  But when she went out, all she found was her husband dead, his heart eaten out by a fox.

It's best not to go into detail about the story where the witch caught someone having flayed one of her goats. The moral of the story is, the witch is not to be trifled with.

“I don't have your pretty sister,” she says to John, “although I did see her.”

And John has a feeling he's about to owe another alarming person another favor.

“Will you tell me about it?” he asks.

She steps over to her kitchen table, and pours out two cups of tea. John follows politely and accepts the cup, and knows better than to drink it.

“She was breathless and disheveled,” says the witch, “when she came up to my door. I suppose she didn't know who I was, because when I gave her tea, she drank it.  She said she was being chased by a beast, but I'm sure I don't know what kind of beast it was. I never saw any sign of it.  And then she asked me for help. Just like you're going to.”

If Harry asked the witch for help, then John thinks the witch might be lying. Harry may not be here, but that doesn't mean the witch doesn't have her.

Either way, “Thank you for the offer of help,” John says. After all, he was already granted a favor from the forest lord. “But I just need to know which way she went.”

He'll pay enough for that information, he's sure. But the witch smiles like the deepening twilight and shakes her head.

“You should ask me for help,” she tells him. It sounds like a warning, or she's giving him a secret, and he doesn't know what to say.

“In any case,” she continues, standing up and heading to the hearth, “my price is little enough. You'd just have to stay the night here.”

Which is as ridiculous as it is self-defeating. “My sister is being chased,” John reminds her. “I don't have time.”

“She wasn't being chased when she left.” The witch nudges another log onto the fire one-handed, careless of the flames crackling an inch past her fingertips. “And anyway, if you don't stay, I won't tell you what direction she left in.”

John circled the entire house, and saw no tracks from Harry's leaving. Considering the mulched leaves and tender green things that grow under the thick branches of this part of the forest, that seems rather strange. It would take someone with skill trying quite hard not to turn up the soft black soil here.  Even if Harry had that kind of woodcraft, why would she use it here?

“What kind of help did you offer her?” John asks suspiciously. The witch simply smiles at him, and he knows he's trapped. Night is falling, and he could wander all night in every direction of these woods and never stumble across a trace of his sister's trail.

He puts down the cup, untouched by his lips, and asks just to be sure, “If I stay for the night, you'll tell me where she went?”

“If you stay for the night, I'll help you,” she answers. He’s not sure that sounds like the same thing.

She pulls out linens and lays them out on the sofa before the fire.  After she lays out the linens for him and banks the fire, she pushes him down into a seat on the sofa and kisses him.

She kisses him, slow and lingering with her red lips and hooded eyes, and John doesn't really want to but she's alluring in her mysteriousness, and even in the way she intimidates him.  When she draws away, he looks at her, confused and unsettled, and isn't sure what he wants—to reach for her again or to flee.

“You wanted my help,” she tells him, as if that somehow answers his question.

She's dark somehow, even with her fair skin and hair, and she isn't pretty in the soft way of a maid.  Her face is lived-in and edged, like a well-used blade, and her eyes gleam like one, and he remembers war when he looks at her.

His hands are steady, and his heart is cold and smooth as a bullet.

“I did want your help,” he agrees. And he's not sure he wants to say the next thing, because it's been so long since he felt like this and he's not sure he wants to stop it. “But how does this help find my sister?”

The witch smiles.

“You didn't ask me to help you find your sister.  Or at any rate, that's not what I agreed to, is it?”  She leans forward again, standing over him, and brushes a hand over his shoulder. “But I will help you, if you'll let me. I will give you your heart's desire.”

“In return for staying the night?” John asks, leaning a little back. She smells heady, like herbs and spices he hasn't smelled since he went away to other lands as a soldier. They go to his head and make the room spin. “That's a low price.”

She leans down to kiss him again, and he doesn't stop her, and finds his hands are on her waist when she stops. She's warm, and soft, but not very soft, and it's been so long—so long since he was with a woman or felt this alive. But he remembers Harry, and how very much danger she might be in. “Is that what you offered my sister?”

“What I offered her, she took,” replies the witch, and John's heart sinks.

“Where did she go?” He pushes the witch back to set her gently back on her heels—not sure whether because it's polite or prudent—and stands.

“I told you, I won't tell you unless you stay the night.”

“I'll stay then. But I decline your kind offer of help,” John tells her, as formally courteous as he can. “I only need the information.”

The witch laughs at him. “Staying the night isn't the price for my help. How like a man to think your heart's desire would come so cheaply.  You can take my offer or not. But it's a bargain compared to paying for what you don't want.”

John thinks that's a warning again, but a warning for what, he couldn't say.

She leaves him, after one last kiss that leaves a scent of blades and foreign lands swirling dizzily in his head all night.  He gets no sleep. More than once, he almost rises to go knock on her bedroom door. He knows it would open if he did.

In the morning, she offers him no drink nor breakfast, and points him toward the east. She's tall for a woman. They're nearly of a height, and so she only needs to lean forward to brush a kiss over each of his eyelids. “I'll see you again,” she promises with a smile.

Last night John would have sworn that Harry had left no trail. This morning, it seems that everywhere he looks is just the right place. A broken fern, a scrape on bark, a bit of an imprint of a shoe and a rolled pebble on a stream bank—he knows he's on the right track.

A fine white mist drifts through the forest, skulking softly between tree trunks and curling its tendrils around leaves.  John can feel it lace gently through his hair and stroke the back of his neck with cool fingers.  Its clean green smell drives the last of the witch's incense scent from John's nose, and he feels his head clear for, it seems, the first time since he met her yesterday.

His stomach twists and he's not sure whether it's the nausea of hunger or of realizing how close he came to disaster last night.  What did she want from him? What did she ask of Harry? What did she give Harry?

They're all questions he should have asked last night, of himself at least if the witch wouldn’t answer, but he doesn't waste effort wondering why he didn't. Even with the early morning forest curling in his nose, he can remember the spicy sweet scent of her, and the way she'd drawn him like a battlefield.  Part of him still shakes for it, a craving he'd thought he'd left behind.

Everything since he'd realized Harry was gone has felt like that. A bone-deep tremor that, somehow, stills and calms him. A raven's distant croak shivers like crystal in the mist, and is answered by another from another direction, and his mind feels crisp with the same sweet clarity as the morning air for the first time since before he came home.

In fact, it's only this moment that he feels he did come home.

The soft rustling of the leaves slowly grows louder, and throatier, and John realizes he's getting close to the river.  

If he listens closely, the hiss and roar of the water sometimes almost sounds like voices.  He remembers the stories from the river bargemen and the sea sailors when he was a soldier, about creatures that live in the water who sometimes, when they're hungry, raise their voices to sing men onto their rocks.

When he reaches the river's bank, the water here is fast and shallow. It's not a big river, at least not this near the headwaters. He's been far downriver, where it's broad and deep and the water is opaque with silt.  Rocks stick up out in the middle of the bed, and water foams and sloshes around them.

How long has it been since John had anything to drink? All that water looks awfully good. So he makes his way gingerly down to the water's edge, to kneel and scoop up handfuls of water, splashing and scrubbing at his face and arms, and then drinking several gulping, refreshing mouthfuls.  It eases the cramp in his stomach from not having eaten in almost 24 hours, even though he knows that won't last.

If the water here were slower, he might wade out and try his hand at catching a fish, but few fish would be interested in braving this current. Still, there might be some quieter, more fish-friendly pools further up-river, where his sister’s trail turns.

Where was Harry going? She must have been looking for a way to get across. But he wonders again what mission the witch sent her on. If someone had asked him a week ago what his sister's greatest desire was, he would have assumed he knew it. But now...put on the spot, he finds himself at a loss.

The forest is strange, here. John would have thought he was familiar with most of it, especially along the river where his people often go, but it's as if he's never seen this place before. As he walks, the colors seem brighter. The air is fresher, with a cool vitalizing snap. The smells of leaf mulch and early summer flowers roll together into a fruity floral cloud of scent so thick that he feels almost smothered in its invisible coils.

It feels almost unreal. Or…more real.  As if he'd only been living in a half-alive world until he stepped in here.

John hears singing.

It's a woman. At first he thinks he's imagining it, and then he remembers the siren stories again.  And then he realizes he recognizes it. It's Harry!

Her voice echoes and splinters through the air, so he has to pace around to track it, but when he manages to pinpoint the direction, it's coming from the river.

He manages to get back down to the bank—the foliage is thick here—and he sees her.  It _is_  Harry. Sitting on a rock in the middle of the river. But she looks wrong somehow, like her shape isn't right…

When the second woman moves, turning in Harry's lap to look at him past the curve of Harry's hip, John realizes his eyes were playing tricks on him.

Harry is singing, smiling down at the woman who's draped half across Harry's lap and half in the water.  Lounging in a curve of the rocks like a queen. This second woman, dark haired and sharp-eyed with lips red as blood, smiles at John.

Her teeth are pointed.

A stunningly beautiful water woman with meat-eater teeth is smiling at him!  That looks threatening. He's not sure whether she means it to.  Then again, yes, he's pretty sure she means it to.

Harry doesn't look up, but the woman calls across the water, “Are you looking for something?”

Which says to him that she knows exactly what he's here for. He supposes he's being fairly obvious, the way he's staring. Although it should be noted, the water-queen is not wearing any clothes.  She's pale and gleams like marble, and her long wet hair is like a stream of ink twisting in the current.  And she looks like she's probably laughing at him.

“That's my sister,” he says.

“Is she?” The woman reaches up to twirl a finger in a lock of Harry's golden hair. “Well, she's mine now.  Unless you would like to come over here and try to take her from me?”  The water queen—something tells John she is a queen—looks at him hopefully, like she sincerely hopes he'll try.

It would probably be a stupid idea. And if he fell in, he has an awful feeling she might actually eat him. But…he eyes the stones in the river consideringly.

“You can't just keep her here,” he tries. “She's not a water creature. She'll die.”

Harry hasn't stopped singing. John knows the song. Their mother used to sing it to them. He hasn't heard Harry's voice raised in song in a long time. The water queen's fingers leave a wet track down the side of Harry's face. “She wasn't exactly thriving back where she came from, was she?”

It feels like swallowing cinders, the truth of that. He remembers how Harry was when they were children, so brightly shining. Her eyes, her smile—looking at her had been like a catching a glimpse of the world lying beyond the horizon, waiting for them to come find it.

She's withered. He went away to war, and came back a failure. She…hadn't gone anywhere at all. There aren't many places for young women to run off to for adventure.

But even so, this isn't where she belongs. “Harry?” he calls to her, hoping to break the spell.

Harry glances up at him with a glint of her blue-gray eyes, and then back down.

No! All at once swept over by a fury at the injustice, John hops out onto the nearest rock. “I won't let you keep her! You can't just…” He waves an arm illustratively at he's-not-sure-what-exactly, and then has to catch his balance.

The water queen's white hands grip the rocks to either side of her, and she pushes herself upright in a cascade of water. Harry finally looks away from her, to follow her eyes toward John.

“Maybe,” the queen says, with a nasty smile on her lips, “you should ask her what she wants.”

He meets Harry's eyes. They're not lifeless. They're not glazed. They're alert and bright and staring straight at John with the same stony sorrow he remembers she'd worn on the day he left to go be a soldier.

“Harry!” John is shaking his head before he even realizes it. “You'll die!”

She shrugs, and her wheat-gold hair shimmers in the morning sun. “So? Was it worth it to you, John? To go away and risk your life to find what you wanted?”

Her heart's desire.

“What do you want, Harry?” That's what the water queen said to ask. He understands now.

Harry smiles at him, achingly joyous. “Love, Johnny. I met a woman, and she said to come here, and that I would find what I wanted.”

The water queen, standing over Harry now with the current swishing about her delicate ankles, strokes a hand tenderly over Harry's hair.  John can’t bear the raw affection he sees on her beautiful white face.

There's another rock nearby, a little further into the river. John hops out onto it, heart aching at the distance he can suddenly feel between them.

The water queen's eyes glitter, and John looks at her. “Is this what you want for her?”

“Do you think it matters what I want?” she fires back. “If she wishes to sacrifice herself to stay with me, shall I dishonor her choice by forcing her to unmake it?”

With a sigh, John sits down on his rock.

The two women look at him, cautious and curious, Harry leaning her golden head against the water queen's lovely hip. “I'm happy, Johnny,” she whispers across the gurgling water. “Isn't that what matters?”

John waves her off, because of course it is. It's been years since he saw his sister with that light in her face. And he remembers searching for happiness for himself, once.

He has a favor. He was going to save it to use to take Harry back home. But if this is what saving her entails… “What if I said I could make it so you could stay?”

They both look at him, puzzled, so he tells them about the forest god's promise. “I could ask him to let you stay. To be part of the forest.”

The queen looks a little impressed. John thinks that might be saying something. She doesn't look like a lady who is easily moved.

So, “Sherlock!” John calls. His voice echoes across the water and through the trees. “Sherlock! Sherlock!” It seems right to call him thrice, an appropriate sort of formality.

A raven that has been watching them from a tree opens its beak and asks, “Are you certain?”

As John watches, astounded, it spreads its black wings to flutter down to the ground…and spreads them and spreads them until they've unfurled into a man, who stands up from his crouch with a splendid rack of antlers on his head.

The water queen bows her head. “Sherlock.”

“Irene.” The forest god nods back.

He's as extraordinary as he was the first time. And maybe John should have known he was there all the time.  The cloak of his scent, the more-than-reality of the woods around him. John remembers now, with the forest god standing before him, what it had been like in his presence the first time.  Maybe it's not the kind of thing that stays well in the human mind. But it strikes John even harder this time than the first. This wild aliveness, he doesn't want to give it up again.

But John already promised Harry.  So, “Yes,” he says. “This is what I want. Let Harry belong here.”

“Hm,” is all the forest god says, antlers turning with his head as he surveys the little gathering.  It seems…terribly non-committal, after all John's gone through.

But the water queen smiles fiercely, almost as if she's gloating at the forest lord, and reaches for Harry's hand, begins pulling…

“Wait!” John says. “Can’t I at least say goodbye?”

He reaches a hand toward Harry…and like a gentleman lightly helping a lady over a puddle, the water queen raises their clasped hands and Harry is skipped across the intervening water into John's embrace.

She clings tight, her face buried in his shoulder. “Thank you, Johnny. Thank you so much.”

“But don’t forget,” says the water queen, when Harry’s returned to her side.  “The witch is justly owed a debt. She did, after all, hold up her end of the bargain for Harry.  And someone,” she warns, with a significant look all around, “has to pay her price.”

John isn't going to allow his sister's happy ending be spoiled, of course.  “I'll deal with the witch,” he says.

And he wonders if she'd known.  Because she'd said she would see him again.

Before he goes, to pay her own debt, the water queen provides him with a bounty of the river's food. He dines well on fish and clams and crayfish like delicious bite-sized lobsters.

While John eats, the water queen leaves with her new water bride.  But John asks the forest god, “Will you stay?”  Because he's going back to see the witch, and he doesn't know what will happen then.  And if this might be his last day of freedom, or maybe of life, he finds he wants to spend it in the forest god's company.

And the forest god smiles at him with a strange sly-sweet smile, and stays.

They sit together in a meadow full of sweet grass and early June flowers and the lazy sound of bees, and John finds that on maybe his last free day, he has the courage to lean into that sweet-smelling cloud of verdant scent, to bring his face near the forest god's.  And to tip his face up to be kissed when the god leans his fine stag-horned head down to kiss him.

He tastes like honey, and peat, and the wine edge of grape blossoms and fresh, cold forest springs. John trembles at the brush of a god's palm across his cheek.  And again at his own daring as he reaches up to weave his fingers through the fur of the god's ruff and then up into his soft, curling dark hair laced with flowers.

The forest god presses him backwards into the meadow grass, lips wandering soft and demanding on John's neck, and John wraps his hands around those magnificent velvet-covered antlers to keep him close. And for a while, they entwine themselves together.

After, John cleans himself in the river, and then looks up to find the forest god grinning at him.  “What?”

“Don't forget, John,” the god says in that beautiful deep voice, “you owe me a favor too.”

And so, as it's nearing dusk again, with the haunting calls of the night birds and the rising chirr of crickets and wood frogs rising around him, John arrives back at the witch's door.

She opens it before he even knocks, and holds out a cup of tea she'd already been cradling in her hand.

This time, he drinks it, in one long swallow.

“I did warn you,” she says kindly.

And she did, that's true. In her way.

She takes the teacup in one hand, and his hand in the other, and leans in to kiss him so that her intoxicating scent wraps around him along with her arms. And then she draws him further inside.

It's as if her house is filled floor to ceiling with an invisible, sense-stealing cloud, seeking to worm into him.  It's her, he thinks. Her power, shaped into the likeness of his heart's desire.

Except it isn't, anymore. It's still heady, with all the potency of nostalgia. But now he's tasted a god. He has Sherlock in his lungs and mouth and heart.  And the spice and blade oil and sweet old-blood smell of foreign battlefields and lost gambles loses its hold on him over that.

When she turns back to him, she sees it in his eyes, and smiles wryly. “Well. Even so, the debt stands.”

With a hand on his chest, she backs him up, step by step, till his back is pressed to the warm stones of her hearth.  “You owe me the price your sister owed me,” she says a little sadly. “I told you my offer to you would have been a bargain in comparison.”

She steps in close to him, breasts firm against his chest. This time, when she starts to kiss him, she doesn't stop.

He can feel it, he thinks, down deep inside him. A plucking, at first, at something in the core of him, that becomes a firm, insistent tug.

His head spins with her. Is he growing sleepy? Or no, maybe drunken? Fragments of dream, snatches of memory spin around him in sweet and bitter tatters, blending here and there when they collide, into things that never happened quite that way. And then they evaporate like smoke.

Oh, he thinks. This is the price his sister would have paid.

It's sweet, as death goes.  Harry was right. It would have been a good choice.

It spins and crashes and shifts and he can’t tell how long it goes, but eventually there's not much left. All the whirling column of memories and life and hopes have gone to smoke, faded into the dark and seeped in between the witch’s lips, except for two or three lone, persistent little scraps that flutter stubbornly. They'll go soon too, and then…well, he'll find out what then. He’s lost his body. Maybe still slumped against the hearth? Is that an edge of brick biting into his back? A warmth of firelight against his calf? It could just be phantoms, or something else.

She could have been crueler. A little remainder of him flickers gratitude at her, if she happens to notice.

And then…a different scent.

Pungently green, one of those last little flutters shoots straight up his nose.

The other follows it, bursts open in the tiny startled space of clarity the first left behind, and it says, _Don't forget, John, you owe me a favor too._

That's it, he thinks on a fading note. The last of him. She drank it all, everything he owed.

“Mmm, everything you were,” the forest god's rich voice agrees.  “Which makes everything you _are_ , mine.”

A breath that smells of peat moss and rabbit fur is warm on his cheek, and that’s an arm supporting him, biting into his back. He doesn’t know where he is, but surely that’s the sun on his hair.  “That favor you owe me, John.” Sun-warmed leaves and phlox blossoms, and a strong arm behind his shoulders. “ _Stay with me._ ”

John opens his eyes and smiles up at Sherlock's antler-crowned face.

The end.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Lord of the Forest and John](https://archiveofourown.org/works/4252548) by [macgyvershe](https://archiveofourown.org/users/macgyvershe/pseuds/macgyvershe)




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